VMware, Atos Integrate to Deliver a 'New Workplace Experience'

Digital transformation services and solutions firm Atos announced an integration between its Digital Workplace offering and VMware's Workspace ONE at VMworld 2017 in Barcelona earlier this month.

While Atos may be an unfamiliar name for those outside of the EU, it shouldn't be for long. The Bezons, France-based company covers all aspects of the digital workplace: from analysis and design, to identifying opportunity for business transformation and persona analysis as well as matching needs of users to the technology.

We followed up with Atos following VMworld to hear a little more about the integration and to learn more about its thoughts on digital transformation.

A 'New Workplace Experience'

Peter Pluim, executive vice president for Infrastructure and Data Management at Atos, said its Workspace ONE integration is a response to the changing enterprise digital workplace and part of an ongoing relationship with Palo Alto, Calif.-based VMware.

“Atos and VMware continuously work together to develop a joint product and solution roadmap for our customers that will deliver choice and innovation as the landscape of digital transformation continues to change,” he told CMSWire.

Peter Pluim
“By embedding VMware Workspace ONE, Atos is able to offer a transformational solution for workplace transformation and management. The result is a holistic solution that enables a consumer-like experience, with a single point of access to data and applications, at the time of need, intuitively and securely — from any device.”

VMWare updated its Workspace ONE integrated digital workspace platform in advance of its conference to offer what it called a "consumer simple, enterprise secure" platform.

The integration means Atos has an end-to-end managed solution to offer customers, including design, build and run services. With this, IT departments can deliver a new digital workspace in which employees can securely bring the technology of their choice.

The integrated solution also simplifies the overall workplace management challenge by unifying all end management and delivers a secure way of working for users across all devices and platforms.

“The result is a new workplace experience, creating business value for our customers with specific business benefits — transformed colleague experience, with more engaged employees, being more productive, and able deliver true business value via tools that offer a more contextual, consistent user experience,” Pluim added.

Digital App Transformation

Digital transformation is not just about changing work and work practices. It is also about changing and redesigning applications.

According to Pluim, application transformation is one of the biggest pain points for enterprises now. As a result, delivering applications and data securely is critical to that new modern workplace experience.

“Through a single platform we can now deliver all application types enterprise customers have in their portfolio to end users, ranging from mobile and cloud applications to line of business and productivity tools used by all,” he said.

In the past, mobility projects have typically been driven by line of business app deployment. While this will continue, there is now added focus on the broader digital transformation aspect, as talent attraction/retention and employee experience becomes a priority for organizations.

Automation, AI and Analytics Solve Digital Workplace Challenges

The integration responds to three enterprise trends currently underway: digitalization, changing workforce demographics and high employee expectations.

Pluim said our increasingly mobile, app-savvy and geographically dispersed workforces now expect the same digital and mobile experiences in the workplace as at home.

These expectations are driving the need for businesses to create a digital workplace strategy that breaks down technology silos, linking security, application owners and business together. IoT and the next wave of devices will require even further integration and alignment for digital workplace projects to succeed.

“Today mobility is a default requiremen, but increasingly the focus on employee experience and new talent attraction is becoming the priority,” he added.

“All this at a time when security threats are becoming more complex, we see traditional IT methods, process and solutions challenged. This is driving the trend and interest in modern management.”

The introduction of internet of things and wearables in the workplace will only create new variations of this problem.

“These will be the really the big game changers in how the workplace will be both delivered and supported in the future, from both a proactive support approach point of view but also as a way of guiding organizations to work more productively with the new tools they have.”